The Man Who Cast Two Shadows

by Carol O'Connell

  “So what have you done now, Harry?”

  “Nothing,” said Harry Kipling, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the leftover chicken from dinner.

  She stared into his smiling face, and she wanted to hit him with a closed fist.

  Pansy woke with a blow to her head. It was not a sharp blow but glancing. In the dim light of the bedroom, she saw the fist flying in the air, and her hand moved out to fend it off. It fell back to Emery’s side. She turned on the bedside lamp, and the pearls of night sweats glistened in the light. The longish hair was an aureole of gray spreading on the pillow around a face of eyes-closed anguish.

  “Emery, wake up!”

  The brown eyes snapped open and looked into hers. She detected a wince, and she shrank back as if from an unkind word. He had trained her in that behavior, much the same as the dog had been trained. And what had he done to the dog? And why did he have to lie about it? What had he done?

  “Having a nightmare, Emery?”

  Were you dreaming of Rosie or your mother?

  “Yes, a nightmare. I look in this hole and it’s alive with maggots, and I’m going into it. It’s all coming undone. Who’s doing this to me?”

  If Pansy had believed in ghosts, she might have had an answer for that. It was the face of Emery’s mother she saw in the mirror across the room, and it was her own face.

  The bouncer and the bartender each had the frowzy redhead by one flabby arm, and even so, she was giving them trouble as they led her out the door. The two large men had loud, hollered words with the woman on the sidewalk and out of Betty Hyde’s earshot.

  Hyde looked around her, noting the rodent droppings on the floor. Definitely not an A rating from the Board of Health.

  Reminders of her less accomplished relatives were on the faces of every drunk at the bar. Her glass had lipstick stains from the previous customer. The slatternly waitress had actually seemed amused when she complained, but a dollar bill had bribed the girl back to the table with a clean glass, and Hyde had slugged back the whole shot. With enough whiskey, anything could be borne.

  She leaned forward as she spoke to the younger woman who sat on the other side of the small table.

  “Mallory, how do you find these places?”

  Of course, she understood the logic. No one from the Coventry Arms was likely to wander in, not without their own private security. The bulge under Mallory’s coat could only be a gun. Now that was comforting.

  “Tell me more about Eric Franz,” said Mallory.

  “Anything specific?” And what did Eric have in common with a judge and a gigolo?

  “Are you sure he’s blind?”

  “Dead sure,” said Betty Hyde.

  “How so?”

  “If the blindness was fraud—the wife didn’t know. How does a man keep a thing like that from his wife?”

  “Maybe she did know.”

  “No, Mallory. Annie believed he was blind.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Well, I did tell you his wife had an interesting sense of humor . . . for a bitch. She used to flirt with men in front of him. Nothing spoken—only the rubbing up, the nuzzling. What Annie did with other men were the sort of things Eric couldn’t see or hear. It was quite a show—the two of them in public. And there were other jokes at his expense, the faces she made, the obscene gestures. It was the darkest humor. You couldn’t look away. You couldn’t tell her to stop. You were a prisoner to every exhibition.”

  “Why did she hate him so much?”

  “Because he loved her so much—too much. If only he’d been rude to her occasionally, it might have gone a long way toward improving the marriage. She was that type.”

  “And his type? He was a doormat?”

  “A nice guy. But you’re right. She had nothing but contempt for him in all the time I knew them.”

  “Is that why they never had children?”

  “You know, there was a time when I could’ve sworn Annie was pregnant. She had that certain aura of impending motherhood. That special glow that comes from vomiting every morning. But then, when I saw her again, she was her old self—drop-dead gorgeous and frighteningly awake.”

  “You think she got rid of it?”

  “Abortion? Yes, I do, but there’s no way to confirm it. I pride myself in being a hard case, but I can’t ask a blind man if his wife aborted their only child. Well, I could if it had the makings of a good story. Does it?”

  “Did you tell Eric I was a cop before I joined the consulting firm?”

  “No, dear. I only told him you might be interested in any little tidbits about the judge. But it was all over the news. Every channel said you were a dead cop.”

  “A fireman was killed on Monday. Do you remember the news story?”

  “Yes, he died saving an old man. It was a long story.”

  “What was the fireman’s name?”

  “I don’t remember. . . .Oh, I see. Yesterday’s news—who remembers the details, the names and faces? But you, my dear, have a memorable face.”

  “And Eric Franz is blind.”

  When she returned home, she hung up her clothes in the closet as Helen had taught her to do. The cat had already sensed her presence and was pounding its hello on the bathroom door with the soft thuds of paws. She pressed the play button on her answering machine, and went into the kitchen to open a can of tuna for her star witness.

  It was Riker’s voice on the machine.

  “Mallory, do any of the suspects have a dog?”

  Charles dimmed the lights of the front room and settled back on the couch, long legs splayed out in front of him. An early Christmas present from Mallory lay in the midst of its green velvet wrapping paper.

  He was staring down at yet another of Mallory’s attempts to lure him into the current century. He had a remarkable record collection and the finest turntable money could buy, but he was a dinosaur in her eyes. It was not the music that counted with her, but the technology. Every old thing be damned, technology ruled.

  He picked up her gift, the portable CD player. Did she really expect him to go about the streets wired up to the age of electronics?

  How perverse was their gift giving. He gave her jewels in antique settings, which she never wore. She gave him expensive high technology, which collected dust between visits from Mrs. Ortega.

  He pushed the button to open the top of the machine, just on the off chance she’d had the plastic cover inscribed with a sentimental message. He gave the same odds that two moons might appear in the sky tonight. A disc lay in the machine, ready to play at a touch. It was only a mild shock that it should be Louisa’s Concerto.

  Could she have known about the ruined record in the basement? Probably not. More than likely, she had noticed the concerto was not included in his record collection, after he had made a point of saying it was a popular recording for any classical music buff.

  Earphones grew out of the small dark box in his hand. But he didn’t actually need the earphones, did he? The concerto was locked in his memory now and running through his conscious mind.

  What had happened this afternoon had stunned him in the way cattle are stunned with a bat before they go into the slaughterhouse blades. He understood how it had happened. The music had always been a trigger in his childhood fantasies of Louisa. Now the concerto was keyed to his eidetic re-creation of Amanda. She was archived in his freakish memory, and she would probably live there forever.

  He didn’t want to touch on this again. The fear was real. It was no ghost story this, but something threatening to his mind.

  Mallory would not be frightened so.

  And what exactly was he frightened of? It was only an illusion, wasn’t it? Something he had made with a child’s memory of a magic act and nothing more, a mere holograph of remembering. Malakhai’s magical insanity had been a gift of sorts, and that was his field, wasn’t it, exploring gifts. Furthermore, he had actually found a practical application for the old magician’s delusion.
If Amanda was true to life, if he was faithful to her in creation, she might be able to tell him something useful to Mallory’s investigation. If Mallory could face bullets, he could face Amanda. It was not so insane. A mere conversation in the mind.

  Memory led him back through the setup for the act.

  He was a child again. The conductor’s baton was rising as the concert hall quieted to heart-stopped silence. The concerto had begun. The inner music fled the confines of his braincase and rose around him in a wall of sound which opened onto bleak corridors filled with the scent of roses. The lull of music was the warning of the great dark hole which sprawled out before him. In that magic silence where the listeners placed the phantom notes rather than endure the emptiness, there he heard a woman keening, wailing for a death, softer now and coming toward him into the light.

  She wore the clothes she died in, the blazer, the blue jeans and running shoes. His memory had faithfully recreated the stain on the material and the uglier stain of the golden hair where the wound matted it to wisps of red strings.

  How did Malakhai begin? Oh yes. So simple.

  “Good evening, Amanda.”

  She gave him a shy smile as she sat down in the chair opposite his own. There was a moment of relief when he realized his creation did not have the substance to make an impression in the plush upholstery. She rested her hands on the arms of the chair. He looked to the wall, more relieved because she cast no shadow to sit with his own.

  “Good evening, Charles.”

  Her voice might be borrowed from Mallory, but in Amanda’s throat, the words were gentled. And gentle were her eyes.

  “Amanda, when I saw you this morning, standing over the little boy—”

  “He was in pain,” she said, looking down at the soft white hands folded in her lap. “I couldn’t bear it.”

  “You only wanted to comfort him.”

  “Yes. Such a troubled little boy. I love children.”

  “I know. It’s difficult for me to understand why you changed your mind about the child you were carrying.”

  She looked down to the floor for words, and not finding them there, she looked up with tears that were all too real to him. Her hands raised in a gesture of helplessness.

  “You wanted that baby very much, didn’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. I planned my life around that child. The baby was the world to me, all that meant anything at all.”

  “Then why? Why did you do it? You asked the doctor to cut the child out of you. What was it about this man that was so horrible it made you abort his child?”

  She rose gracefully and walked away from him, back into the shadows. Her gait was listless, tired. It had been hard work cutting a much wanted baby from her womb, her life, her future—when she had one. Too hard on her.

  5

  DECEMBER 24

  Angel Kipling scanned the bulletin board, her bright eyes rocketing across the scrolling lines, seeking out the evidence of fresh lies and wondering how much it would cost her this time. Perhaps it would cost her one husband in addition to the fees for keeping her name out of the press.

  Each time he kissed her cheek, she recoiled, wondering where he might have been, wondering what he might have done, had to wonder, couldn’t stop herself. His lies were unnerving, and her logic was relentless in puzzling out each one.

  Early-morning sun obscured only a few of the lines which repeated endlessly. Angel glared, but the lines would not go away.

  “Don’t panic,” she whispered. “You always panic.”

  It was probably a shakedown. If it wasn’t a shakedown, it would have exploded all over the media.

  So, nothing’s going to happen for a while. We wait for a connection.

  She looked to her reflection in the glass of the monitor. “See how simple things can be, if you only let them be?”

  She wished sometimes that he would die. As long as he lived, he would be within harming distance. Would that he might die, and she could be done with him instead of always listening to his lies and his excuses and his endless apologies. He had apologized very nicely for illegally putting up the condo as loan collateral. But then he apologized for clearing his throat. He apologized to the dog, and then he apologized to her in the same tone.

  The concierge surveyed his world, the lobby of the Coventry Arms, and found nothing amiss. Perfectly attired people went to and fro in their designer dresses, tailored suits and handmade shoes. He paid more attention to the clothes than to the faces, and the faces of the occasional children registered not at all.

  His toe tapped to the quick, bright notes of a Vivaldi mandolin concerto which played throughout the lobby at a tasteful level of background music.

  Less tuneful, downright disruptive music of high-pitched barks and guttural growls was coming from the elevator in its descent to the ground floor. The doors opened and the dog fight overflowed from the elevator and into the lobby.

  The concierge waved his hands at the porter, but the porter was hanging back a safe distance from the fray. Of course, no job description required the man to be torn to shreds by a pit bull and a mastiff. The owners were displaying the same common sense. And now the doorman had abandoned his post and entered the lobby to cheer on the mastiff. The porter displayed a five-dollar bill and placed a silent bet with the doorman, his money on the pit bull.

  Well, something had to be done.

  The concierge, who had never been invited to a dog fight before and didn’t understand the rules, found himself standing too close, and now he was wincing with a bite from the mastiff, his own scream chiming in with the barks.

  All comings and goings had stopped, and twelve people gathered to watch. Between the blood flow and the betting, not one of them noticed the key being taken from the rack behind the desk, and then being replaced with a key similar to Mallory’s.

  “Did you like the CD player?”

  “Yes, thank you. And the recording of Louisa’s Concerto was a nice touch.”

  “You have to change to CDs, Charles. You might be able to transfer most of your records. They’re in good shape.”

  “For artifacts, you mean? I like the records. I like the turntable.” He did not want any more technology invading the house.

  “Your record collection can’t grow with obsolete technology. And you can’t replace worn-out records anymore. I noticed you didn’t have a copy of Louisa’s Concerto in your collection.”

  “I wore it out ages ago. There was another one in Max’s collection downstairs, but I’m afraid I ruined that one. The timing of your gift was perfect.”

  “Whatever happened to Max’s friend, crazy Malakhai?”

  “Oh, he’s living a quieter life these days.”

  “I suppose he is pretty old.”

  “Yes, he’s getting on in years.” Since when did Mallory make small talk?

  “And Louisa? She’s really still with him?”

  “Oh, yes. But Louisa would still be young, just nineteen, forever.”

  Charles watched her pinning more printouts to the corkboard which spanned the wall of her private office. “Are you quite sure you’re onto something with the business of the lie?”

  Mallory tapped the printout from the real-estate-agency computer, and he did not ask if the real estate agency had donated this material by consent or by a hijack on the midnight rail of the electronic superhighway.

  “Four days before the abortion, she made an offer on a small house upstate. According to her agency file, she was concerned with local school systems and area playgrounds. During the next four days, according to the doctor, she hardly ate or slept. I’m guessing this is where he told her the lie. So it worked on her and then she had it out with him.”

  “The outburst at the keyboard was just before her death, wasn’t it? Could we have this wrong? Might that be the day she caught him in the lie?”

  “No. The lie made her abort the child. It worked on her. Maybe she just couldn’t take it anymore. She snapped late.”

&n
bsp; “There’s a flaw in the logic here.”

  “You can’t always go by logic. You have to get into the perp’s skin. When you know him, you know how and why. All I’m missing now is who.” She turned to him. “How well do you think you know Amanda?”

  There was only a subtle shadow across his mind. She couldn’t know what he was doing with Malakhai’s magic madness. But the timing of her gift of music was entirely too perfect. Had she made a trip to the basement and seen the ruined record? No, of course not. That was paranoid.

  “Based on the manuscript, I might know Amanda well enough to guess her reactions to events, but not the events themselves, not the lie that was told to her. I can only tell you it had to be something monstrous. She had a gentle personality, a wry sense of the ridiculous. I rather liked—”

  “Nothing in the monster category in their background checks. But she had to turn it up with the usual research avenues. If she found it, I can find it.”

  “Not necessarily. And you have to consider that this might not have been his first kill, that he’s done it before and gotten away with it. That might be what she uncovered. It’s better logic—”

  “If there was no record of it, how did she find it?”

  “Mallory, these two people had very intimate knowledge of one another. This was no great love story—but they shared a bed; there was conversation. If he lied to her, she may have caught it in the untechnological way the rest of us catch lies. When you tell the truth, it’s always the same truth. When you lie, you must have a superb memory, or it will be a different lie in every telling.”

  And now his eyes took on some pain as he clearly understood their separate roles in this business: Mallory could crawl into the mind of a killer with disturbing ease. She had left the difficult job to him, the job of identifying with a frail human being who had no pathology or defenses in a brutal landscape peopled with those whom Mallory best identified with.